Early graphic adventure games (1979–1983) games, including Mystery House and The Wizard and the Princess'' Around 1979, Roberta Williams was an avid player of
text adventures on her
teletype machine, particularly as a fan of
Colossal Cave Adventure. The game sold 60,000 copies, leading them to hire more employees for distribution and programming. After just two years Sierra had grown to nearly a hundred employees with $10million in revenue. Around this time,
Jim Henson approached Ken Williams to create
a game adaptation of
The Dark Crystal, before the film's release. The high-profile game caused the company to attract mainstream media attention, and Roberta hoped that the entertainment industry would not just recognize the value of games, but also the value of the artists who created them. Although the PCjr was considered a failure, ''King's Quest
was ported to many other platforms and quickly rose to bestseller status. becoming the first adventure game to allow the player character to move in front of, behind, or over other objects on the screen. which earned a reputation for its unique style of storytelling, as well as its increasingly advanced graphics and technology. When King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella
was released in 1988, it was one of the first games to receive sound card support, and one of the first adventure games to support a mouse. It was also one of the first games to feature a female protagonist, a creative decision that Williams seeded by introducing the character in the previous game. Some of her peers cautioned that this might deter men from playing the game, but it was even more commercially successful than previous installments. The game went on to sell more than 500,000 copies, and the CD-ROM version earned the Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Early Education Program. The game was still rare for featuring a female protagonist, The 1990 release of King's Quest V'' became the first game to use an icon-based interface, continuing the series' innovations in game design. The game was critically acclaimed, winning several awards upon release, with
Computer Gaming World including it in their 1996 list of greatest games of all time. By the early 1990s, Sierra was a publicly traded company, generating $100million per year in revenue. Meanwhile, Williams worked with
Jane Jensen to design ''
King's Quest VI.'' Released in 1992, it was recognized by several publications as one of the best adventure games, if not one of the best games overall. By the mid-1990s, Williams was considered the company's most popular game designer, particularly for her success with the ''King's Quest
series. She hoped to re-introduce some interactivity absent in Phantasmagoria'', and to embrace the advances in 3D graphics technology. When she removed certain role-playing elements, the team would re-add them, leading to a power struggle with management. By the 2000s, Sierra's assets were held by
Activision Blizzard, ==Retirement==